Big fun

After reviewing thousands of games over the last 15 years, I'm confident I have a good appreciation of what makes a great game, and can readily identify many of the traps that developers routinely fall into that can frustrate and discourage players.

But after spending some joyous hours with LittleBigPlanet on PlayStation 3 this week, I have a renewed appreciation for the skills and talent of games designers worldwide.

It's not because of how much fun Media Molecule's wondrous creation is (although it is almost certainly going to be one of the highlights of the year's gaming releases) but more because my first feeble attempts at creating a level were so awful.

My colleagues also produced platforming stages (and some wacky machines) that were unlikely to cause Miyamoto to lose much sleep. Yet all of our creations shared one trait - they were fantastic fun to make (whether alone or in tandem with others) and often hilarious to play, even in their most ridiculously broken and primitive state.

My time with LittleBigPlanet this week begun with a presentation by Nick Robinson, Senior Product Manager at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, then a few hours hands-on with the intuitive Create mode and some of the introductory levels created by developer Media Molecule.

For those that missed Screen Play's introduction to the game a year ago, Nick describes LittleBigPlanet as "a physics-based platformer that includes all of the tools, really intuitive and fun-to-use tools, that the developers use to create this game, so that you and your friends can create your own stuff".

Nick says he uses the word "stuff" deliberately. "We don't want to use the word 'levels' because you can create other things. We don't want to use the word 'content' because it's a bit dry.

"It's not mini-games either, because you can make a mini site about your cat if you want. You can make massive sprawling game levels, you can chain them all together and make platform adventures (complete with basic cut-scenes)."

The game's mantra is "Play, Create, Share" - with each element receiving equal attention from the studio. But Media Molecule also has another in-house rule - "Don't Cheat". Every single level and item contained in the "professional" levels on the disc has been created using the same tools as what players can harness.

"Everything they can create, you can create," Nick says, before adding that the tools allow players to explore and experiment with what gaming personally means to them - what you consider "fun".

In their levels, Media Molecule avoid hiding the mechanisms of how their cool toys and creations work, deliberately "pulling away the curtain" so that players can see how simple they are and get inspiration for their own designs.

Nick readily admits that "not everyone is going to want to create" but stresses that "the
depth is there for the people who want to do it".

"The 50-or-so levels that are actually on the Blu-ray are designed to be an inspiration for what people want to build," he says. "They are not designed to be the be all and end all of LittleBigPlanet. They're just the starting point."

Early levels introduce the mechanisms for levels and controlling your "Sackboy character" (run, jump and drag). The action can be presented on three planes, with movement in and out of the screen handled automatically. Media Molecule dub the system "2.5D" and in action it is as simple and accessible as any old-school platformer.

LittleBigPlanet presents a very physical, tactile world. Physics puzzles include simple see-saws, spinning wheels that propel you into the air, and soccer balls that you can grab and use to roll up around to a higher platform.

While described as a platformer, you can also create basic role playing elements - essentially conditional events with multiple options. If players make one choice, there will be a consequence, and the other choice will be closed off.

There are few creation items available to LittleBigPlanet users upon booting up the game for the first time - playing through the pre-built stages enables players to unlock items to use in the creation mode.

Essentially forcing people to play the adventure mode might be a controversial decision among those who are simply desperate to get in and start making their own creations, but after seeing how much material can be eventually unlocked, it seems wise to gently introduce players to many of the game's creative tools and objects so as not to overwhelm or intimidate.

The obsessive or completist will also find a compelling reason to replay stages and find the many hidden objects - some of which cannot be accessed until you discover tools from latter levels.

Every level has an entrance point for the Sackboy characters, and can also feature elements like checkpoints, start and finishing lines for races, and end-of-level scoreboards.

Every object is constructed using one of the game's basic materials, which include wood, bricks, cardboard, sponge, polystyrene, stone, metal, glass, rubber, feathers and cloth. These easily identifiable materials are a critical element of the game because players will instantly understand each material's properties and uses. Each has a different weight and friction, for example.

There are also a few more fantastical but easily understandable additions like "bubble" material that floats, and "dissolvable" material which is great for attaching to proximity-based triggers or physical switches to activate exciting events such as prizes falling from the sky.

During Screen Play's time with the Create mode, it quickly becomes apparent that switches are crucial for designing gameplay elements (rather than relying on the more unpredictable physics to cause drama).

Objects can be easily "glued" together or bonded to the ground so they cannot be moved, and the relatively recent introduction of "dark matter" to the list of materials is very useful, often providing a handy workaround for tethering aerial objects and creating anchored, unmovable objects.

You can also unlock materials with different visual textures, such as coloured cardboard, but each obviously has the same properties as the plain materials.

Even beginners will discover that just by placing a few simple objects and choosing a background scene you can create a fun little obstacle course for other people to enjoy - a process that can take just minutes. But our tinkering (and particularly Media Molecule's wondrous designs) also showed theirs is terrific scope for wasting countless hours constructing elaborate and unique constructions.

Customising Sackboy is also fun, with players able to change their character's clothes, eyes, mouth and hair, as well as adding amusing novelties like goggles, and items to hold.

Media Molecule wanted players to be able to communicate with others from around the world, so puppeteering elements have been added, which can be hilarious. By holding down the PS3 controller's triggers you can use the analog sticks to manipulate the character's arms, while you can move Sackboy's head by waving the pad around thanks to Sixaxis motion sensing support.

You can also switch between emotions like happy, angry, sad and scared via the directional pad. Both voice and text chat is supported, with Sackboy lip synching if you use a microphone.

Backgrounds for use in your designs include urban areas, deserts, temples, and the now-familiar garden. They are not simply flat images or photos - you can change the lighting and colour correction and add elements like fog to dramatically change their appearance and the subsequent atmosphere.

I drew inspiration for my level from the urban background, with Sackboy triggering a switch which caused a basketball to bounce down some stairs and into a basket, which then triggered the opening of a (very primitive) garage which included a cool race car (that Media Molecule had built).

The low-rider featured a switch in the driver's seat that propelled the car forwards when Sackboy pulled it. The level included a race start and finish, but I should have added a second car for two-player competition.

Using the "Popit" tool is reasonably simple and quickly becomes intuitive, and there are overlay grids available for placing objects precisely.

A thermometer style gauge on the side of the screen acts as a simple gauge representing each level's memory restriction.

Levels can be almost as wide as you like and infinitely high, but there obviously needs to be a limit on the amount of elements in each stage to keep file sizes reasonable for uploading and sharing online. Adding hundreds of objects seemed to have little impact on the gauge, but items like music made it jump appreciably.

Music and sound effects can be interactive - linked to an event such as an object being dropped or a character passing by a certain point in the level - but you cannot currently import your own audio because of "file sharing" copyright concerns.

The same restriction is easier to overcome with user-created stickers, with the PlayStation Eye support allowing you to essentially scan anything (as well as snap images of you and your friends or family to put into your worlds).

Amusingly, you can make Monty Python-esque creations using photos and then adding interactive elements like moving eyes that follow Sackboy around the screen.

Two of the most useful buttons in the Creator mode are "hover" which helps you get your Sackboy around the level quickly and easily, and "Pause" which essentially turns off the physics system and lets you more easily place moving objects like spinning cogs.

The realistic physics system will no doubt ensure endless laughs, but one trap I regularly kept falling into is forgetting to pause during construction and then carelessly triggering traps or knocking over elaborate compositions, which resulted in me having to reload my stage, often losing my most recent completed work. There is a helpful "undo" function which removes an object that you just placed, but I often wished for a "rewind" instead that would pick up the pieces that I just broke.

There are some other quirks of Popit that might annoy, such as the fiddly process of selecting items. I often had trouble after combining multiple objects together, then realizing I had made a mistake and finding it difficult to move a single element. But overall, Popit is an absolute delight to use.

Categories include "stickers and decorations", "tools" and a "goodies bag", with multiple tabs that are quickly and easily navigated using the shoulder buttons.

There are few limits on your imagination. You can easily create your own designs using raw materials and either adding shapes together or cutting.

Mechanical machines are constructed using parts like nuts, bolts, wheels, cogs, pistons, winches and motorized bolts, which can be tweaked for speed and strength. Media Molecule has even created bosses with varied attack patterns and multiple layers.

You can also easily make physical objects dangerous for Sackboy, imbuing them with poisonous, electric or flaming attributes.

Nick says some elements of LittleBigPlanet have been removed to ensure players are not overwhelmed by complexity or depth, but naturally there will be the opportunity to provide them later down the track when the community is more mature.

He says Sony is extremely unlikely to ever charge for additional levels because of the huge amount of free levels that will be available (some of which will be created by Media Molecule as both "official" and "unofficial" creations.

But of course the game has plenty of scope for other downloadable content allowing Sony to extract more money from players and to drastically change the experience. Things like gravity changes allowing space-themed levels and weapons or tools for Sackboy to have deeper interaction with his environment immediately spring to mind.

"One of the things that Media Molecule are very keen on is seeing what the community
wants," says Nick.

"There's loads of ideas that they've got, and some of them have even been built, but they're not in here yet. There's a lot of things that completely change what people make. We want to see what people start to make and then we'll decide."

For example, support for keyboard and mouse has not be ruled out (but will not be available at launch) and the same goes for an audio editor to create your own music and sound effects.

Jason Hill was a guest of Sony Computer Entertainment at this week's Pause event.

Posted
by Jason HillJuly 31, 2008 7:32 AM

LATEST COMMENTS

I've been waiting for this one almost as long as I've been waiting for Spore and The Force Unleashed. Now it looks like all three will be coming out almost at the same time.

Cruelty! How on earth am I meant to choose what to play first?

Posted by: DexX on July 31, 2008 9:33 AM

before this article i wasn't interested in LBP. But now it does sound like a lot of fun.

Posted by: Ultimate Russ on July 31, 2008 10:00 AM

Reminds me a little of Sierras 'Incredible Machine'

Posted by: Cannon on July 31, 2008 10:49 AM

Wow, LBP is the first PS3 title that I could imagine people "buying a PS3 *just* to play it".
(Damn - there's a word for this - help me Jason - I can't recall it now)

Last Ninja on the C64, Sonic on the MD, Doom on a 386 PC, and now LBP on the PS3.

Such a pity that the "no sound/music import" shows that Sony *still*
has their collective heads STUCK in the "old" copyright thought process.
(Ooh, better stop people importing music in their levels, because just 1 person importing a Christina Aguilera song will mean no-one will ever buy her albums or ringtones ever again ZOMG MASSIVE PROFIT LOSS!!!!1!11!!1)

The Youtube model exemplifies the "Nu" copyright idea.
Ie: The more people hear a song (eg laughing at someone lipsync to it)
the more chances the viewer will like what they see,
and pay for other things by that artist. (Concert DVDs, Ringtones, etc)

Anyway, despite my disappointment with the sound import issue,
LBP is a game that deserves to do well.
Thumbs up to Sony for pushing a title that's not just "last gen + more pixels".

Jason says: While I'm sure Sony's other divisions don't want people distributing copywrited Sony music, the bigger issue for SCE is that it could face legal action from other companies if it allowed music file sharing on their network. The alternative would be to moderate every single uploaded level, which would obviously be unworkable and destroy the community.

Posted by: Gabe on July 31, 2008 10:57 AM

Looks good... But possibly a little too perky for me. I tend to like my games darker.

Still, it could be interesting to see how morbid you could get with the level creator.

Freerider and Crayon Physics are great fun flash versions of this game...

But seriously, it's about time a full blown game was made out of this concept, and I'm glad to hear that incredibly complex levels can be made without topping the memory restriction. Boom blox always annoys me with its limitations on memory.

Posted by: InstinctSage on July 31, 2008 12:35 PM

I utterly adore everything I have seen about this game, but I wonder how it actually plays as a platformer? It is fun?

Most coverage I have seen focusses on how much fun customising your sackboy is (Tron suit FTW) or how easy the level creator is - but little on what it is like to play the actual levels. Does it have old school Mario-like appeal?

I can't wait for this game, I just hope it lives up to the incredibly high expectations that it is generating.

Jason says: Yes, it certainly has old-school platformer appeal, with the added goodness that the realistic physics system and multiplayer competition/co-operation both provide.

Posted by: attila on July 31, 2008 12:38 PM

Looks amazing. This really isn't the kind of game I wound usually play, but I can actually see myself getting this.

Sounds like it would be great for two-player action as well, something which seems to be lacking on the PS3 so far.

I got to play LBP at last years Tokyo game show and to be perfectly honest I thought it quirky but only capable of keeping my interest for a week (2 tops).
Platformers without story or engaging characters just don't hold my attention long.
The only reason I see that long is the old 3D stunts game phenomenon where my brother and I would keep making levels that would most attack the others gaming weaknesses

Posted by: ManaGarmr on July 31, 2008 12:58 PM

Oooooooh

I've tooled around trying to make FPS games on the PC with FPS Creator but this looks sweeeeet.

(Just as well really as I've been wondering what games I should be investing in on the new baby - the metacritic top games haven't done much for me just yet)

Posted by: col on July 31, 2008 1:05 PM

I'm a sucker for games with good artistic design, so I'm glad to hear that this one has some substance too.

Not that the two are usually mutually exclusive, of course. Quite the opposite, in fact, as demonstrated by the likes of Team Fortress 2, Okami, Everday Shooter, Shadow of the Colossus, Bioshock...

Posted by: Tervicz on July 31, 2008 1:22 PM

"Platformers without story or engaging characters just don't hold my attention long."

Posted by: ManaGarmr on July 31, 2008 12:58 PM

Platform games with engaging characters and stories... Do they make those?

Back on LBP:
Anyone know how many players local multiplayer will support? Is it only two?

Jason says: It's four.

Posted by: Blenny on July 31, 2008 1:26 PM

"The alternative would be to moderate every single uploaded level, which would obviously be unworkable and destroy the community."
Or they could do what the DMCA allows YouTube to do, which (arguably, unfairly) shifts the burden of moderation onto the copyright holders.

I assume that they're going to require some form of community moderation already, with the photo-importing capability.

I'm guessing the time-to-c**k score will be similar to what Spore experienced.

Jason says: Yes, the community will be able to report any offensive material, just like with Buzz and SingStar.

Posted by: dude on July 31, 2008 1:53 PM

How does the game handle AI opponents (if any)?
For example, I'm assuming if it's a platformer you could insert characters to try to thwart sackboy's progress, rather than relying on purely environmental traps.
Making NPC AI is really fun in platformers, but I can't really see how LBP could do it in a simplistic and accessible manner, and simply having pre-defined creatures with pre-defined behaviours would put a bit of a limit on that aspect of the game.

Jason says: There's no AI opponents as such, just machines. But as I said in the story, MM have come up with quite sophisticated robotic bosses.

Posted by: InstinctSage on July 31, 2008 1:56 PM

Looks too open ended for me :/

I think I'd probably find the best way to cause my little guy the most gruesome death possible, then probably get bored of it.

I really struggle without an objective in these sort of games, I found the only way I got any real joy out of the Spore creature creator was min-maxing my creatures stats and seeing what look I could do it with (Best effort was 5 stats set to 5)

Posted by: Anthony on July 31, 2008 3:00 PM

Be interesting to see what others can come up with. I'm not a huge fan of MM's string-puppet/shadow-puppet style art. Everything looks a bit too gaudy, and a lot of the physics is a bit too 'floaty'. e.g. compared to the tight controls of something like R&C.

But that looks like more of a style thing than anything inherent to the engine.

Posted by: Michael on July 31, 2008 3:22 PM

Seconded on reminding me of The Incredible Machine.

Jason, did you ever play that?

It's a fun concept but we'll see if it actually has more legs in it than the odd idle day of messing around.

Posted by: Raf on August 1, 2008 11:54 AM

Awesome looking game and a brilliant idea. So looking forward to this game. I've been following it ever since it was announced at GDC back in 2007

Posted by: Lars Wadsworth on September 25, 2008 1:32 PM

From what I've heard this game is supposed to be one of the best this year and probably next year. I've seen lots of videos and it's looks like it could be very fun.

Posted by: XanTrax on September 25, 2008 1:36 PM

I played an exclusive demo at E3 and it's very very fun. I made a mini carnival in roughly 30 minutes I had a ferris wheel, roller coaster a huge trampoline it was pretty awesome I can't wait for this game to come out I wish I could play it right now it's very addicting.

Posted by: Chuck Liddell on September 25, 2008 1:45 PM

Man this really is the best game of all time, I really would love to play it too!